On Tuesday, rapper and prolific tweeter Kanye West shared some thoughts about the high cost of education, specifically college textbooks.
Unlike some of his other tweets, West's comments were about a serious issue that major politicians have already started working on.
First, here are the tweets that Kanye offered the world on Tuesday afternoon.
OK, hold up, I'm going to let him finish, but let's look at this. The friend that West is referring to makes around $88,000 a year, which is a pretty decent middle-class income. We don't know if the family has other bills, or how they are paying for tuition and room and board. Still, the idea that someone who is employed and in the middle class can't afford one textbook for school with a day's work is nothing to sneeze at.
Around a third of college students have to use financial aid to cover the cost of textbooks, a report released this month by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group found. Students spend around $1,200 a year on books and supplies, according to the College Board, regardless of whether they attend a community college or a private four-year university.
Anyway, please continue, Yeezy.
This is true.
In the past 25 years, the median wage for college graduates in their 20s has barely budged, while the median debt at graduation has gone up 163 percent. The average college student in the class of 2014 left school with an average of $28,950 in debt, a recent report showed. Overall, Americans owe $1.3 trillion in student debt -- more than any other kind of consumer debt.
Now, back to Kanye.
Again, he's right. And legislators are considering one possible solution.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has pushed a bill to create a grant program to help universities set up open-source textbooks.
Open-source textbooks are basically books that are available under an open license, so professors, students and researchers can freely access the materials. Because these books would be online, updates could be issued whenever needed -- so not only would students have the most recent information, there would also be no need to spend hundreds on the latest edition.
In other words, instead of having to buy a $200 hard copy of a book, students could access a digital copy for free on any device. If there is a cost, it would be minimal, something like $20 for extra flash cards and other study materials.
The fact that Durbin is pushing the bill along with co-sponsors Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Angus King (I-Maine) explains why Senate Democrats tweeted in support of West on Tuesday.
Sometimes West says ridiculous things. On Sunday he tweeted, "Ima fix wolves." ("Wolves" is a song he's working on. But since Ye tweeted it right after asking Mark Zuckerberg for $1 billion, it came off a bit random -- like most of the singer's messages.)
So let's look at how Yeezy finished up his education tweetstorm.
Alright, well, a lot of people would agree that teachers should get paid more and that books should cost less, but there isn't really a correlation there.
Judging by the #2020 hashtag, maybe he's laying out the education plank of his platform for his presidential campaign in four years -- "lower the price of textbooks," and "fix wolves." At least one of those is something members of Congress are actually addressing.
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Tyler Kingkade is a national reporter that covers higher education and millennials. You can reach him at tyler.kingkade@huffingtonpost.com, or on Twitter:@tylerkingkade.